Hampton Oks Office Park

HAMPTON — The City Council gave final approval Wednesday night to a 57-acre office park on Big Bethel Road with an innovative traffic management strategy that could become a model for the region.

Under the complicated plan, the first of its kind in Hampton, the Morrow Group of Companies Inc. will be allowed to build as much as 600,000 square feet of office and warehouse space near Big Bethel and Interstate 64. But that amount could increase later on if the developer finds ways to cut down on the traffic generated, such as by encouraging employers to organize car pools or by staggering scheduled work hours.

Officials hailed the agreement Wednesday as a creative way to boost the economy as much as possible without compounding traffic problems.

"This was truly a first for the city of Hampton," said Mayor James L. Eason.

The management plan may be watched closely by fast-growing localities struggling to cope with development pressures that could overwhelm area roads.

City officials have said the fate of the program may determine how planners manage growth along the rest of Big Bethel Road, a corridor they say has come under increasing pressure to be rezoned for commercial and office development because of the planned widening of the road to four lanes.

"This is a really good way to try to balance development and the traffic," Eason said in an earlier interview. "Where there's an incentive to maximize the tax base and minimize the transportation problem, that's a win-win situation for everybody."

Officials said the new program is an effective way to monitor - and manage - traffic after a development has been approved by the city.

While most rezonings are, by necessity, based on estimates of future traffic, the new approach, they say, would allow the city to count the actual cars generated when buildings get built and occupied. If the traffic is higher than expected, development stops as planned. But if it is less than expected, the city can allow for more office space and beef up the economy.

In the case of the Morrow project, the developer could add as much as another 100,000 square feet of space, according to a complicated traffic formula.

"By using a formula, we were telling the city to put economic incentives on us to make us manage the traffic," said William R. Van Buren III, an attorney for the developer.

At a meeting last month, Councilman Baxter E. Simmons said he would oppose the program for fear it could trigger too much development in future years when traffic conditions may change. But he supported the plan Wednesday after staff revised its formula to reduce the number of cars that would be allowed.

While the program may be a new concept for this region, it has been used for several years in traffic-choked Northern Virginia, where the road network has not kept pace with office buildings and shopping centers.

How successful such efforts will be is not yet known, according to officials in Fairfax County, where many of the programs are now in place.